This plant makes the stuff so their storage or possession of more than 400 lbs in a given fact on any minute of any day.
Although ammonium nitrate in concentrations of more than 60% is highly regulated after the McVey bomb, ammonium nitrate is still used as the primary ingredient of fertilizer and will be into the foreseeable future.
All fertilizer plants make it....and they make it in 100% concentrations. They also can make anhydrous ammonia because it is used to create ammonium nitrate. But by the time you get it at Lowes or Home Depot, It has been watered down with various fillers and chemicals to make it inert and no longer useful as a explosive.
Pre- McVeigh, You could buy 80-85% ammonium nitrate at fertilizer stores....But you cannot anylonger, and old stocks of it have been regulated so that 400lbs or more has to be reported and if sold reported to whom it was sold...
I also believe that they put tracers in the stuff to identify the point of origin, so they pretty much have it covered in the US.
But a fertilizer plant should be expected to have quatities far above retail storage and sales regulations.
To blame this plant for not submitting storage reports on over 400lbs of nitrates would be like blaming a refinery for having more than 50 gallons of gas in storage as is law in some local jurisdictions...
So there is something totally wrong with this accusation....
So there is something totally wrong with this accusation....
In the safety regulation world of explosives or explosive nitrates, the state of Texas or by federal regulation, the facility could or should have been "sited" prior to storage for how much they can keep at their location at any one time.
It is called an explosive license for how much explosives for the facility or complex. Did the facility have an explosive license or did they not? Were they in compliance or not with that license? Or did they even need an explosive license? Based on the powerful mass detonation of the ammonia nitrate on hand, they should have had an explosive license if they did not.